Founder of Veggie Tales talks about his company's financial fall.

THE FOUNDER of the company that produces popular animated series Veggie Tales, Phil Vischer, spoke about his financial woes recently. In the February issue of Christianity Today magazine Vischer described how the plight of his Big Idea Productions was like "falling down a flight of stairs in slow motion. Big Idea filed for bankruptcy before being sold in December to New York-based Classic Media. Vischer admitted that he mistakenly assumed Big Idea could continue its meteoric growth in video sales, from several hundred in 1993 to seven million in 1999. When sales flattened in 2000, the company started losing money and was more than $40 million in debt by 2003. "The valuation of the company and everything (it produced) was based on these forecasts that in hindsight.were just based on bad assumptions - just flat out bad assumptions."

A forthcoming Veggie Tales project will be the video/DVD 'An Easter Carol', which will include singer Rebecca St James and will be followed by 'A Snoodle's Tale' in the spring and 'Sumos Of The Opera' in the autumn. CR

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